Melissa, who plays Bernadette in the TV series, shared her news in a heartfelt essay where she also opened up about the "profound sorrow" of a previous miscarriage with screenwriter husband Winston Rauch.

"Here is the only statement regarding my pregnancy that doesn't make me feel like a complete fraud: 'Melissa is expecting her first child," her representative wrote on Glamour.com.

"She is extremely overjoyed, but if she's being honest, due to the fact that she had a miscarriage the last time she was pregnant, she's pretty much terrified at the moment that it will happen again.

"'She feels weird even announcing this at all, and would rather wait until her child heads off to college to tell anyone, but she figures she should probably share this news before someone sees her waddling around with her mid-section protruding and announces it first."

The miscarriage resulted in "one of the most profound sorrows I have ever felt in my life," the actress shared (Image: WENN)

The miscarriage resulted in "one of the most profound sorrows I have ever felt in my life," Melissa then added. "It kickstarted a primal depression that lingered in me.

"The image of our baby on the ultrasound monitor - without movement, without a heartbeat - after we had seen that same little heart healthy and flickering just two weeks prior completely blindsided us and haunts me to this day. I kept waiting for the sadness to lift... but it didn't."

Melissa wrote that she dislikes the term miscarriage because she be believes it "deserves to be ranked as one of the worst, most blame-inducing medical terms ever".

The actress plays Bernadette in the sitcom (Image: Instagram)

She continued: "To me, it immediately conjures up an implication that it was the woman's fault, like she somehow 'mishandled the carrying of this baby'."

The actress said while she was grieving for the loss of her pregnancy and struggling with fertility, every other baby announcement "felt like a tiny stab in the heart".

Melissa went on: "It's not that I wasn't happy for these people, but I would think, 'Why are these shiny, carefree, fertile women so easily able to do what I cannot?'

"And then I'd immediately feel guilt and shame for harboring that jealousy - one might call this 'the circle of strife'."